Geo-politics, the world, Israel and Zionism…uncensored but respectful

This post has been contributed by a third party.
The moral challenge of Gaza

MAY 15, 2018, 3:02 PM Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman is President of the Shalom Hartman Institute and author of “Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself”

• Mr. Netanyahu, tear down the wall dividing our people.

Late last night, as the death toll in Gaza neared 60 human beings, my daughter called me with one simple question.
“Abba, what are you writing about Gaza?”
Before her call, I hadn’t intended to write. Gaza paralyzes me into silence.When I read reports or hear discourse about Israeli Army use of lethal force against demonstrators, I cringe. To call what is happening at the Gaza border a demonstration, is a perversion of reality as I know it.
The inhabitants of Gaza have every right and reason to demonstrate against the tragedy which is their life. Not only do they live under unforgiveable and deplorable conditions, no one is taking responsibility either for their predicament or for the path to rectify it.What is happening on the Gaza border is not a protest against the reality of life in Gaza, but an attack against the sovereignty of Israel and its right to exist. Palestinians have every right to view and experience the formation of Israel as their Nakba (catastrophe). They have every right to view the Six Day War and Israel’s reunification of Jerusalem as a deepening of this Nakba. When tens of thousands of people, civilians interspersed with thousands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, march on our border with the intent to destroy it, and penetrate into Israel, and allow the terrorists to murder Israelis, it is not only not a peace demonstration, it is not a demonstration at all. It is a battlefield, where anyone who approaches the fence is a combatant.
While Palestinians have every right to their narrative of Nakba, my people have every right to celebrate our independence and our victory in 1967, and to express joy at being home in our country, whose capital is Jerusalem. And we have every right to defend our rights.The challenge is that when it comes to Gaza, for Israelis our moral conscience is by and large, silent. We argue that our unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, including its setting of the precedent of dismantling Jewish settlements, should have inspired Gazans to embrace or at the very least explore, the possibility of peace, instead of the path of war. It should have inspired the trade of goods and the fostering of economic ties, and instead it led to missile fire and the resulting partial blockade.
We hold the Gaza population personally responsible for the choices they have made. We hold the leadership that they have chosen, a leadership that regularly declares its desire for my destruction and acts on it, as responsible both for the tragedy of Gaza and its rectification. And as a result, most Israelis believe that from this moment henceforth, our moral responsibilities are limited to our efforts at self-defense. The plight of Gazans is taken out of the equation of our moral discourse.
Gaza paralyzes me into silence, for I am like most Israelis. I am not only saddened by the choices they have made and by the paths that they have chosen not to take, I am angry. I am a devout two-statist, who believes in the right of the Palestinian people to sovereignty in their own state, living side-by-side with Israel in peace and security for both of us. I am angry, because I believe that the hatred and violence spewing out of Gaza has possibly buried Israelis’ belief in the viability of the two-state solution in our lifetime. Any discourse about a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria is immediately rejected under the counter-argument: “It will just become another Gaza.” And this Gaza will be able to shut down all of Israel with mere mortar fire.
But as my daughter’s phone call reminded me, we cannot allow ourselves to be paralyzed, and to create a moral black hole in our society. I do not believe that Israel is principally responsible for the reality which is Gaza, but it does bear some responsibility. I do not believe that our soldiers on the border of Gaza are firing on demonstrators, but are engaged in a war. I do not believe that the Hamas-inspired action on the border poses an existential threat to the State of Israel. It does, however, pose a life-and-death danger for many Israelis. At the same time, 60 human beings were killed and thousands were injured in one day.
While 60 human beings lost their lives, and Israeli soldiers were engaged in the horrific challenge of protecting our border, tens of thousands of Israelis converged on Rabin Square in Tel Aviv to sing and rejoice with Netta Barzilai on her and our victory in the Eurovision contest.
When the Egyptians – a greater power and enemy than the Palestinians – were drowning in the Red Sea, our tradition recounts that the angels in heaven began to sing a song of praise to God. God silenced them with the words, “My creation is drowning in the sea, and you want to sing a song of praise?”
The Book of Esther recounts a particularly chilling moment. After Ahasuerus and Haman sent forth the pronouncement decreeing the murder and destruction of all Jews throughout the kingdom in one day, it states, “And the King and Haman sat down to drink and the city of Shushan was in chaos.”
We do not need to take moral responsibility for the reality which is Gaza, but at the same time we cannot allow our humanity and moral conscience to be so inert as to sit down and drink, not to speak of dancing in our city squares, when we are causing, justifiably or not, death and chaos.
We can believe that the events in Gaza are a war against Israel, support our soldiers, and still desire a public debate over the means necessary to win this war. I don’t value Monday morning moral philosophers, nor expressions of “concern” for loss of life. I do value serious moral reflection on how to ensure that we live up to our military moral code, which demands that even when force is used in self-defense, we only use the amount of force necessary and in proportion to the danger that we face, and that we do everything in our power to avoid civilian casualties. I do desire an Israeli society which welcomes and engages in this discourse.
I do not believe that our soldiers are violating international law, yet I am interested in a public discourse about what our soldiers on the front lines in Gaza are experiencing. I am interested in defending our soldiers from being placed in situations where their orders are not clear, and thus placing our soldiers in morally compromised situations.Gaza paralyzes me, because human beings are dying at my hands, and I do not know how to prevent it. Gaza frightens me, because it is so easy to forget it and sing, regardless of what is happening there. Gaza challenges us, for it is in Gaza that our commitment to the value of human life is and will be tested.
We may not be principally responsible for the reality which is Gaza, but like all moral human beings, we must constantly ask ourselves whether and how we can be part of the solution. As Jews, we are commanded to walk in the way of God, a God who declares, “My creation is drowning, and what are you doing about it?”

Before providing a salient link lower down I will quote a recent commentary by a well known American Physician in New York who writes in his email blog and ties the Trump announcement and the yet to be passed Taylor Force Act:

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“The next step for Trump prior to actually moving the embassy should be to sign into law the Taylor Force Act and stop sending $ 300 million/year of American taxpayer money to the corrupt Palestinian Authority to fund the monthly salaries of the Terrorists in Israeli prisons who are paid by ratio of how many Jews they have killed.

The amount is 700 million if you include what is paid to these families indirectly through UNWRA (these numbers are 2016 records). More dead Jews = higher monthly salary.

All 300 million goes to the families of these imprisoned killers.

If you don’t believe this then by all means look it up.

Fox News did a good piece on this recently and it is available for viewing on YouTube.

This 28 year old non-Jewish American marine was stabbed to death while on vacation in Israel by a Palestinian terrorist on the Tel Aviv ocean boardwalk last year, among with 10 other victims prior to being shot to death by Israeli police.

This terrorists body was returned to his village and received a heroes welcome/ funeral.

Taylor’s parents have spearheaded this act together with Republican Lindsey Graham.

Of course Israeli ambassador to the UN Danny Dannon is also much involved in the lobbying of this bill.

Sadly this bill has not landed on the Presidents desk for signature yet.

It recently passed the House of Representatives.

This took a lot of arm twisting as originally not one Democratic Congressman supported it (ongoing Obama influence).

It is now set to be debated in the Senate.

Any Democratic Senator who opposes this bill should be singled for public taxpayer opinion re their prior campaign funding records, in my opinion.

Such campaign funding investigation would truly shed light on the amount and extend of influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in the swamp known as Washington.

BTW, one of the highest recipients of such Arab lobbying money was Hillary Clinton’s Vice Presidential running mate.

Do not take my word for any of this.

Please do whatever research is required for you to realize that this is not Fake News.”

Don’t expect Julie Webb-Pullman to state the truth. Her whole diatribe is one lie after another.

Lie #1: “UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s first big challenge has seen him falter, and fall”. Guterres has neither faltered nor fallen. If anything he has risen like a phoenix from the ashes, standing up against the bullying of the Arab states and non-aligned that for years been coerced by petro dollars and other bribes to vote against Israel.

Lie #2: “..if the UN is to retain any semblance of independence, impartiality and integrity.” The UN was rarely independent, impartial or with integrity. One of those rare occasions was in 1947 where they voted in favour of creating a Jewish State (not an Arab state) and a separate Arab state (not a Jewish State). The Jews accepted. The Arabs did not. After Israel declared independence (by the UN’s right to) in 1948, the Arab states attacked Israel…. and they lost. This newly independent “Palestinian” country changed it’s name to Israel as what it’s original was for thousands of years. The provinces of Judea and Samaria were lost in the cease-fire line to Jordan however was still part of the original mandate that was granted to the Jewish people….legally as in INTERNATIONAL LAW.

Lie #3: “..two highly qualified, experienced and respected scholars: Richard Falk, Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University, internationally recognized as one of the world’s finest, and Virginia Tilley, Professor of Political Science at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.” They are hardly qualified, hardly experienced and hardly respected.. except by despotic regimes, purveyors of anti-Semitic porn and like minded endorsers of terrorist regimes such as Hamas and Iran. Even the PA tried to get Falk expelled from the UN for his support of Hamas. Tilley is not much better. She promotes the destruction of Israel in her “one state solution” essay and writings would rather see the Jews swallowed in a sea of Arab interlopers then 20 Arab countries take care of their own expats who’s settlements and occupations are visible throughout the Land of Israel especially during the last 120 years.

Lie #4: “The 80+ UN resolutions Israel is currently in breach of were passed simply and solely because Israel REPEATEDLY BREAKS INTERNATIONAL LAW.” Of course this lie has become practically universal by the Jew hating Israel bashers. They use this general term yet never state the statute or law that Israel has broken. UN resolutions are not laws. They are stated opinions by member states who by vote of majority in their own fiefdom of states aligned by agenda or coercion, gang up on Israel.

Lie #5: “These principles are that human rights are universal and inalienable; indivisible; interdependent and interrelated. (note to SG – Palestinians should have them too.)”.

Palestinians? Who are they? The Palestinians of 70 CE? 1929? 1936? 1947? 1948? 1964? 1967? 2002? It seems there are different Palestinian flavours for every occasion or political need. The only REAL Palestinians are the Jews who have a deed of sale, the purchase of the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs from time immemorial. The Arabs who came later are missing the most important document…their own deed of sale enshrined not only in the Bible, not only in the annals of history but even in the Koran itself. The current “State” of Jordan is the only homeland for the current day Arab Palestinians or of course any of the other Arab states that refuse to give them citizenship.

She, Falk and Tilley are all cut from the same cloth… finish the job that the Romans, Persians, Greeks, Crusaders, Mameluke’s, Nazi’s and Muslim hordes failed to do. The only difference is they use the pen instead of the sword. I have news for them…. history is on the side of the Jews. Just wait and see.

This is my response to Falk’s latest insulting diatribe against Peres which I included below since he probably won’t publish it. The so called “important newspaper” probably had the questions and answers delivered to them by Falk himself:

Falk,
Your lies and insults are to be expected.
You don’t deserve the right to even utter the name of our 9th President.
May Shimon’s neshama rise and take its place among the righteous and mourners of Zion. Yehi Zichro Baruch.

[Prefatory Note: the text that follows is derived from an interview yesterday with an important Brazilian newspaper. I have retained the questions posed by the journalist, but expanded and reframed my responses. The death of Shimon Peres is the last surviving member of Israel’s founding figures, and in many ways a fascinating political personality, generating wildly contradictory appraisals. My own experience of the man was direct, although rather superficial, but it did give me greater confidence to trust my reservations about his impact and influence, which collides with the adulation that he has inspired among American liberals, in particular.]

1) What is the main legacy of president Shimon Peres, in your point of view?

Shimon Peres leaves behind a legacy of a long public life of commitment to making Israel a success story, economically, politically, diplomatically, and even psychologically. He is being celebrated around the world for his intelligence, perseverance, and in recent decades for his public advocacy of a realistic peace with the Palestinians. I believe he lived an impressive and significant life, but one that was also flawed in many ways. He does not deserve, in my opinion, the unconditional admiration he is receiving, especially from the high and mighty in Europe and North America. Underneath his idealistic rhetoric was a tough-minded and mainstream commitment to Zionist goals coupled with an expectation that the Palestinians, if sensible, would submit graciously to this reality, and if not, deservedly suffer the consequences of abuse and harm. He was never, contrary to his image, a supporter of an idealistic peace based on recognizing the equality of the Palestinian people, acknowledging the wrongs of the nakba and the Palestinian ordeal that followed, and in creating a sustainable peace that included realizing Palestinian rights as defined by international law.

* 2) Do you believe Peres was ever close to obtaining a definitive peace deal with Palestinians? What did it get wrong?

In my view, Peres never even wanted to reach a sustainable peace agreement with the Palestinians, but he fooled many people, including the committee in Oslo that selects the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. He was unyielding in his refusal to grant Palestinians dispossessed in 1948 any right of return. He early favored, in fact helped initiate, and never really confronted the settlement movement as it encroached upon the West Bank and East Jerusalem. He consistently pretended to be more peace-oriented than he was except when it served his purposes to seem war-like. I share the assessment made by Marc H. Ellis, the highly respected and influential dissident Jewish thinker, that aside from the exaggerated praise he is receiving, Peres will be more accurately remembered, especially by Palestinians, as an enabler of “a narrative of Jewish innocence and redemption that was always much more sinister from the beginning.” When Peres’ political ambitions made it opportune for him to be militarist, he had little difficulty putting ‘peace’ to one side and embarking on hawkish policies of destructive fury such as the infamous attack on Qana (Lebanon) in April 1996, apparently with the design of improving his electoral prospects, which in any event turned out badly. What seems generally accurate is the view that Peres believed the Israel would evolve in a more secure and tranquil manner if it achieved some kind of peace with Palestine, thereby the conflict to a negotiated end. Yet the peace that Peres favored was always filtered through a distorting Zionist optic, which meant that it was neither fair nor balanced, and was unlikely to last even if some such arrangement were to be swallowed in despair at some point by Palestinian leaders. To date, despite many attempted entrapments, the Palestinians have avoided political surrender beneath such banners of ‘false peace’ that have adorned the diplomatic stage from time to time. The Oslo diplomacy came close to achieving a diplomatic seduction, yet its ‘peace process’ while helpful for Israel’s expansionist designs never was able to deliver, as it promised, an end to the conflict in a form that met Israel’s unspoken priorities for territorial gains, a legitimated Jewish state, and a permanently subordinated Palestinian existence.

3) Have you ever had chance of talking directly with him? If yes, what could you tell us on his personality?

I had small dinners with Peres on two separate occasions, and attended a couple of larger events where he was the guest of honor. Both of these dinners took place in New York City more than twenty years ago. I was impressed by Peres’ intelligence and social skills, but also by his arrogant and insensitive Israeli nationalism and his unanticipated interest at the time in promoting a strategic alignment with US global and regional policies in the Middle East, which he expressed in think tank militarist terms when he regarded himself as among friends. I remember, in particular, his advocacy, then way ahead of unfolding events, of the feasibility of achieving close strategic partnerships among Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. His premise, which has proved correct, was that these three political actors shared common interests in regional security and the political established order that would take precedence over supposedly antagonistic ideological goals and ethical values. Peres believed that these countries were natural allies bound by mutual interests, an outlook that exhibited his geopolitically driven political mentality. Peres also seemed always to make it clear in private settings that he was not seen as naïve, and frequently made the point that the Middle East was not Scandinavia. I heard him speak in 1993 one time at Princeton shortly after the famed handshake on the White House lawn between Rabin and Arafat. On that occasion he made it clear that the ‘Palestinians’ were ‘Arabs,’ and accordingly it would be appropriate for the 22 Arab countries to absorb the Palestinian refugees rather than expect this burden to fall on Israel’s shoulders. Beyond this, he indicated his hopes for normalization in the Middle East that would benefit both Israel and the Arab countries, which he visualized by a metaphor I found racist at the time: Israel would supply the brains, while the Arab would supply the brawn, and the combination would be a productive regional body politic.

* 4) Do you think Shimon Peres was one of the most dedicated Israeli leaders to achieving a two state solution? Why?

I am not sure about the true nature of Peres’ commitment to a two state solution, although I felt his public offerings were often manipulative toward the Palestinians and were put forward in a disarming manner as if responsive to reasonable Palestinian expectations. Underneath the visionary rhetoric, Peres acted as if Israel’s diplomatic muscle gave it the opportunity to offer the Palestinians a constrained state that would end the conflict while leaving Israel with indirect and no longer contested control of a disproportionate share of historic Palestine. As is typical for political realists, Peres exaggerated the capacity of military might to prevail over political resolve. He has been so far wrong about attaining Israel’s goal of a controlled peace ever being achievable, underestimating Palestinian nationalism and its insistence that peace be based on the equality of the two peoples. Part of why Peres was so appreciated internationally is that his language and vision tended to be outwardly humanistic, and thus contrasted with the far blunter approaches associated with many recent politicians in Israel, and most notably with Bibi Netanyahu. Only by such a comparison can Peres be genuinely considered as ‘a man of peace.’ But this image, however much polished, does not capture the essence of this complicated, contradictory, and talented political personality. As suggested earlier, Peres is probably best understood as a geopolitical realist who believed in maximizing Israeli military power, and not only for defensive purposes, but to give the country the capacity to impose its will on the outcome of the conflict, and to exert unchallenged influence over the entire region. It should not be forgotten that Peres initially became prominent decades ago as a leading overseas procurer of weapons for Israel and later as the political entrepreneur of Israel’s nuclear weapons program, which included persuading France to give assistance that violated its commitments as a party to the Nonproliferation Treaty. As well, on occasion, for the sake of his political ambitions when in or aspiring to high office, Peres supported and was responsible for very aggressive military retaliatory strikes against Palestinian communities that caused heavy casualties among innocent civilians.

Peres was always very useful for the West: an ally and someone who presented a hopeful, moderate, and peace-oriented outer look that was presented as exhibiting the soul of Israel, a moral energy trying forever to free the country from the birth pains of its violent emergence. The Economist unintentionally illustrated Peres’ witty cynicism that also came across in personal encounters: “There are two things that cannot be made without closing your eyes, love and peace. If you try to make them with open eyes, you won’t get anywhere.” The august magazine offered this to show off Peres’ wisdom, but I take it as summarizing his deeply suspect view of real peace, or for that matter, of real love.

It is not surprising, yet still symbolically disappointing, that President Barack Obama unreservingly exalts Shimon Peres, and is making the symbolic pilgrimage to Israel to take part in the funeral service honoring his life. If Peres’ actual political impact is taken into account, his words of excessive tribute to Peres should haunt Obama if he were exposed to the other side of Peres, the so-called ‘father of the settlement movement,’ ‘the butcher of Qana,’ ‘the man behind Israeli nuclear weapons’: “A light has gone out, but the hope he gave us will burn forever. Shimon Peres was a soldier for Israel, for the Jewish people, for justice, for peace and for the belief that we can be true to our best selves – to the very end of our time on Earth and to the legacy that we leave to others.”

As with Obama’s recent disturbingly positive public statement of farewell to Netanyahu at the UN, the departing president seems overly eager to create a final, formal impression of unconditional solidarity with Israel, an attitude reinforced in these instances by showing only the most nominal concern for the ongoing Palestinian ordeal. One can only wonder what became of the outlook contained in Obama’s much heralded 2009 speech in Cairo that viewed Israel/Palestine in a more balanced way and promised to turn a new page in relations between the United States and the Middle East. It does not require a historian to remind ourselves that Israel wasted little time in mobilizing its lobbying forces to pour scorn on such a revisioning of policy inducing Obama to back down in an awkward and politically costly manner. Perhaps, this ‘reset’ can be justified as a practical move by Obama in the interest of governing, but why now when the tides of political pressure have relented and after so much experience of Netanyahu, does Obama want to be regarded more than ever as Israel’s staunch friend rather than as someone who was so often obstructed by the Israeli leadership?

Such a posture is distressing, in part, because it overlooks the outrageous and undisguised effort by Netanyahu to favor Romney for president in the 2012 American elections and his later belligerent circumvention of White House protocol by speaking directly to the U.S. Congress to register intense opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. If Obama behaves in this craven way, what might we expect from a Clinton presidency? Clinton has already committed her likely forthcoming administration to the absurd goal of raising even higher the level of friendship and solidarity between the two countries higher than it was during the Obama years. She has provided tangible evidence that this pledge is genuine by making gratuitous and unacceptable avowals of intense opposition to the BDS Campaign, and hence of subordinating the constitutional rights of American citizens to the whims of pro-Israeli extremists.

Initially posted on Richard Falk’s site. In case he deletes here it is:

At least my friend Howard chose to give a proper introduction to the video you guy’s chose to label “propaganda”:
This is so well done and worth the 4 minutes. For those of you who have known this for years, the exact numbers are still very interesting. Please pass this on.

I have always found it amazing that the wealthy Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia will spend billions each year building mosques in Germany (80 this year) and paying the Saudi trained Wahabist/ Salafist/ radical imams of these institutions but will not spend a penny resettling these Palestinian Professional refugees within their own borders. Just look at Jordan whose population is over 80% “Palestinian” and they have never been granted citizenship. OK to work in the Victoria Secret factory in Jordan but not Arab enough to be granted citizenship. Remember that in 1922 Sir Winston Churchill gave Transjordan to the Hashemites to guard Mecca and Medina. However, they were driven out by the Saudis. Chaim Weizmann, the first Israeli President agreed to give 80% of the mandate land of the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the Jordanians in return for a written agreement to take care of the displaced Palestinians. Today Jordan is 83% Palestinian but they are still refugees without citizenship status.

With the recent holiday of Passover, it is important to remember the nefarious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem whose hatred of Jews was the prime incitement of the 1920 Passover riots in Jerusalem where many Jews were slaughtered. On April 4, 1920 during Passover in Jerusalem an Arab mob was whipped into a frenzy in the Nebi Musa mosque east of Jerusalem and for four days terrorized the residents of the old city, killing six Jews and injuring 200 others. The British were aware in advance of the attacks and stood by doing nothing to protect the Jews. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who organized the defense of the Jewish quarter was arrested by the British and sentenced to a long prison term (but was soon released). This attack in 1920 signaled the beginning of organized Palestinian terror with its epicenter in the mosques. The first such clandestine organization was the Black Hand led by Syrian born Al- Qassam advocating for violent struggle to oust the British and eliminate the Jews, making way for a Greater Syria. Qassam was finally killed by the Brits. However, his example served as a role model… terror under the cloak of religion and recruiting from the lower class. This formula was replicated 60 years later by Hamas ( charter of 1983) to kill in the name of god. His influence was so widespread hence the naming of the infamous rockets which rain down on Israelis to this day (Qassam rockets) and the Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas.

To appease the Arabs in 1921 Amin Al-Husseini was appointed by the British to the highest Muslim position in the land (the British were financially strapped after WWI) . Churchill was the Colonial Minister at the time for British Mandate Palestine. When the newly appointed Mufti asked Churchill to nullify the 1917 Balfour Declaration advocating the creation of a Jewish state in BM Palestine, Churchill flatly refused, stating that the 3000 years of Jewish presence in Jerusalem and the surrounding area made it logical fro this to be the Jewish homeland. With these words he echoes the declaration of Napoleon Bonaparte who, in 1799, after conquering the region of Acre, stated that the entire should be administered by the Jews, citing their 3000 years of continuous presence in this region. And let us not forget that On June 30, 1922 a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress in Washington DC endorsed a “ mandate for Palestine”, confirming the right of Jews to settle anywhere they choose between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean sea. From the River to the Sea really meant something different back then. This is the core legacy of support which our current president somehow fails to recall but will hopefully be better upheld by the next administration.

Another interesting tidbit….

“ Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect Israels right to exist, its territorial integrity. I see Israel as one of the greatest outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security and that security must be a reality. I solemnly pledge to do my utmost to uphold the fair name of the Jews, because bigotry in any form is an affront to us all.”

Martin Luther King…. March 25, 1968 ( a few weeks before he was murdered at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis)

Activists from US coast to coast robotically parrot the same lies, employ the same tactics of bullying, intimidating and silencing pro-Israel activists and speakers on campus after campus.

To defeat the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel, it is first necessary to understand it.

The BDS campaign is an extraordinary phenomenon.

Activists from US coast to coast robotically parrot the same lies, employ the same tactics of bullying, intimidating and silencing pro-Israel activists and speakers on campus after campus.

Their goals are uniform. They seek to silence pro-Israel voices in US academia as a means to destroy general public support for Israel in America.

And they seek to make Jew-hatred socially acceptable in elite circles in America for the first time since the Holocaust.

This month it was leftist MK Tzipi Livni’s turn to fall victim to BDS bigotry and defamation. During a public appearance at Harvard Law School, one of the heads of BDS movement at the school, Husam el-Qoulaq, asked her why she is “smelly.”

Qoulaq is the head of Students for Justice in Palestine at Harvard Law School.

SJP is the central engine of the BDS movement.

Its members are the ones who organize the “divest from Israel” resolutions routinely passed by ignorant or intimidated student representatives on college councils.

SJP members are the ones who regularly harass pro-Israel students and riot or otherwise disrupt pro-Israel events on campuses.

They are the ones who willingly and purposely engage in rank anti-Semitic demonization of Jews and Israel to normalize Jew-hatred in America.

Given SJP’s lead role in the campaign against Israel and American Jewry on college campuses, students and Jewish groups trying to combat the racist movement focus their attention on SJP.

But it works out that SJP doesn’t formally exist.

There is no nonprofit group called Students for Justice in Palestine. SJP doesn’t file tax forms. It doesn’t have a paper trail. In other words, SJP is a ghost organization, an illusion.

To bring it down you need to find its controllers.

The Canary Mission (canarymission.org) is a website managed by students and activists. It was formed “to document people and groups that are promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and the Jewish people, particularly on college campuses in North America.”

According to the website, SJP was founded in 2001 by UC Berkeley Prof. Hatem Bazian. Bazian’s organizational pedigree reads like the who’s who of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in America.

Bazian fund-raised for a Hamas front group called KindHearts. In 2008, like a number of other Islamic groups that were found guilty of providing material support for terrorism in the framework of the Holy Land Foundation trial, KindHearts was forced to disband. KindHearts was found to have raised money for Hamas.

Another of Bazian’s former employers, the Islamic Association for Palestine, also disbanded after it was found guilty of funding Hamas.

According to the Canary Mission’s findings, Bazian founded SJP to distance the BDS movement from its Islamic masters. His idea was to brand it as a radical group that could easily collaborate with other radical groups on campus and so turn the radical establishment into an engine for anti-Israel activism.

Although Bazian went to great lengths to brand SJP as a non-Islamic movement, he had no intention of ceding control of the BDS movement to non-Islamic forces. To ensure control over SJP, and through it, the BDS movement as a whole, according to the Canary Mission, Bazian formed American Muslims for Palestine.

On April 19, during a hearing before the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa, American Muslims for Palestine’s nature became clear.

Jonathan Schanzer served as a terrorism finance analyst for the Department of the Treasury from 2004 to 2007. He currently works as the vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington. In testimony before the subcommittee, Schanzer revealed that the heads of AMP are alumni of three Islamist groups that were banned following their convictions for terrorism financing during the course of the Holy Land Foundation trial that ended in 2008.

AMP’s leadership held key positions at the Holy Land Foundation, KindHearts and the Islamic Association for Palestine. These groups and their employees transferred millions of dollars to al-Qaida, Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Although Schanzer could find no indication that AMP is continuing its predecessors’ practice of sending funds to foreign terrorist groups, he demonstrated how the heir of Hamas-USA now direct the BDS movement. Through AMP, they control SJP.

In his words, “AMP is a Chicago-based organization that is a leading driver of the BDS campaign.

AMP is arguably the most important sponsor and organizer for Students for Justice in Palestine, which is the most visible arm of the BDS campaign on campuses in the United States. AMP provides speakers, training, printed materials, a so-called ‘Apartheid Wall,’ and grants to SJP activists.”

Schanzer added, “AMP even has a campus coordinator on staff whose job is to work directly with SJP and other pro-BDS campus groups across the country.”

The reason that SJP activists utilize the same tactics and rhetoric from sea to shining sea is because officials from the heir to disbanded terrorism funding groups tells them what to say and do. Everything from their “Apartheid Walls” and Die-Ins to their posters and slogans and tactic of shutting down pro-Israel events is dictated to them by AMP.

Whereas SJP doesn’t exist at all on paper, AMP’s existence is eyebrow-raising from a legal perspective.

AMP is not registered as a nonprofit so it is impossible to know its funding sources or the size of its donations, because it is not required to publicize them. As Schanzer explained, funds for AMP are raised through yet another organization called Americans for Justice in Palestine Education Foundation, or AJP, whose nature and behavior are also strange.

AJP’s chairman is Bazian. AJP and AMP share the same office in the Chicago suburb of Palos Hill.

Unlike AMP, AJP is a registered nonprofit. In its 2014 990 tax form, attached to Schanzer’s testimony, it reports raising in excess of $3.2 million between 2010 and 2014. But, in apparent breach of the law, AJP did not report how it spent the money or where it received the funds from.

Like AMP, AJP members worked in the past for the Holy Land Foundation, the Islamic Association for Palestine and KindHearts. Indeed, most of them are the same people.

Not only do AMP-AFP fail to divulge their financing sources or outlays, they revel in their practice of operating at the edges of the law. At AMP’s 2014 annual conference in Chicago, participants were invited to “come and navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.”

Given SJP’s raging success, it isn’t a surprise that Bazian isn’t the only one claiming to have founded it. For instance, Senan Shaqdeh claims that he founded SJP. As Schanzer testified, Shaqdeh, who also lives in Chicago, is listed as a terrorist from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine by the PLO’s Ministry of Expatriate Affairs’ website.

Shaqdeh is also the coordinator of the Chicago- based US Coalition to Boycott Israel. In 2014, Shaqdeh traveled to Ramallah where he met with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah.

The chairman of the US Coalition to Boycott Israel is Ghassan Barakat. According to Schanzer, Barakat is a PLO consular official in Chicago.

Like SJP, the Coalition is not a legal entity. It is not registered with state or local tax authorities. But given Barakat’s and Shaqdeh’s associations with the PLO and the PA, it is likely that it is funded by the US-funded PA.

Perhaps money from the PLO to SJP and other BDS outlets is transferred through an opaque New York state registered nonprofit called Wespac. Currently, a delegation of Palestinian students, organized by Bir Zeit University, paid for by Wespac and managed by SJP is traveling through the US lobbying students to boycott Israel.

Schanzer’s testimony should lead anti-BDS efforts in three directions. Two of them are legal, and one is political.

On the legal front, AMP and AJP’s commingling is curious, to say the least. Their failure to report the sources of their funding or how the funds are used appear, at a minimum, to be a breach of reporting requirements. These irregularities, along with the fact that officers of these organizations were in the past officers of organizations disbanded due to their provision of material support for terrorism, warrant criminal investigations by both tax authorities and counterterrorism investigators.

Unfortunately, shortly after he entered office in 2009, President Barack Obama’s then-attorney- general Eric Holder ordered the Department of Justice to stop investigating Islamist nonprofit groups. Accordingly, it is highly unlikely that any investigation will be conducted by federal agencies in the near future.

This leaves state, local and congressional authorities.

Since AMP and AJP are registered in Palos Hills, both Illinois tax authorities and law enforcement and Palos Hills authorities can open investigations into their operations. Moreover, Congress, which exposed the fact that both groups appear to be a natural continuation of banned terrorism-supporting organizations, is fully empowered to conduct congressional investigations of their operations, replete with the power to subpoena witnesses.

As for the operations of PLO officials in Chicago, their work is arguably in breach of the laws stipulating the permitted conduct of PLO officials in the US. Congress can investigate their behavior as well, and determine whether or not it constitutes a material breach of the PLO’s permitted actions in America, and so requires the US to cut off its relations with the terrorist group. Certainly the involvement of PA/PLO officials in an anti-Semitic hate campaign is grounds for a cut off of US aid to the PA.

On the political front, it is vital that Israel fight BDS as the most widespread form of Antisemitism in North America. Unlike the situation in Europe, where BDS is largely an economic warfare campaign, in the US its goal is political. Its leaders are not interested in harming the Israeli economy per se. They are interested in cultivating anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel to pave the way for economic warfare and actual war against Israel.

Government ministers involved with the fight against BDS need to provide anti-BDS activists with information about SJP’s links to Hamas and with the PA. American Jewish organizations and activists need to call out college administrators when they say since they refuse to carry out divestment resolutions that they oppose BDS, even as they allow SJP to operate on their campuses and even fund the Hamas front group directly.

Schanzer’s testimony makes clear that the BDS movement is part and parcel of the jihadist war against Israel whose goal is its annihilation.

“Palestinians’ rights to have an independent state next to the Zionist entity is not the feasible solution – it is a delusion-irrational fraction of a mind/s. It is a civil-ecclesiastical illegal.”
****Agreed as there is no Palestinian people. Only Arabs that call themselves such.

“Palestinians’ rights include the abolishment of Jordan landmark in Holy Land and get their Landmarkers between Palestinian-Israel and Saud province of Jordan –”

*****Not sure which Jordanian landmark you are referring to. Jordan’s only involvement in the Holy Land other then their occupation of Judea and Samaria between 1948 and 1967 is the management of the Temple Mount through their Wakf.

“I do not see anything else to be just and right, without consequences on the next Generations of Arabs and Jews in the Region.”
******True, only future strife can be anticipated by a “Palestinian” State next to Israel. Ultimately there already is one and its called Jordan. Let them change the name!!

“Further, Nuclear things are not even possible to be touched out of Israel – as long as there are crookedly made landmarks of Holy Land.”
******This is totally Chinese (no offence to our Asian friends). Unable to understand as the English is undecipherable.
“No one can ask or beg anyone to do anything that is threat increasing for someone, and irrational.”
*****Agreed

“Israel, in fact did bring on open grave upon themeless by stealing nuclear items – that what was not in their Spiritual authority. That fact adds another hell in the region.”
******I don’t know where you got this from. France built at least one of the 2 Israeli Nuclear reactors. What did Israel steal?

“But with a minute – all that- is actually done by special interest cults and sects.”
****** Unable to understand as the English is undecipherable.

“I do not know about all you folks – but all of you should just slap yourself awake from bewitchments and delusions of self-made graves.”
****** Unable to understand as the English is undecipherable.

“Blessed Passover for all that calibrate the Feast
Happy Pesach!!”

***** I guess you meant “celebrate”. Thank you too!! I just decided to eat my first time Yemenite Mazoth!!